


Climatology

by themunak



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Katekyou Hitman Reborn!, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Crossover, Gen, Growing Up, Ten Years Later Arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-02-28
Packaged: 2018-03-15 07:58:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3439535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themunak/pseuds/themunak
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Melinda is promised a teacher who can open new doors for her, one who will give her new things to do, new goals to accomplish. She gets more than just new doors-- she gets an entirely new world to explore, whether she likes it or not. Nevertheless, she takes to it like a duck to water.</p><p>Or to be more accurate, takes it by storm.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Gathering wind speed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A friend just got into AOS, and asked me what if Melinda got trained by someone from KHR. I cried, and this fic was born from my tears.
> 
> As a note: MCU-only people don't need to know much about KHR to be able to follow this. Similarly, KHR-only readers don't need to have watched any of the MCU movies or AOS. If you're still confused about something from the other canon, or even the timeline of the fic, feel free to ask me for clarification and I'll answer to the best of my ability.

Melinda May is thirteen years old when her mother declares that she has no more to teach her. That she's devoured every last bit of training, knowledge and information that a woman in an intelligence bureau can give her like one with a hunger that can never be satisfied.

And that? That is disappointing. What is she to do now? She is always restless, like a flurry of leaves kicked up in a gust of wind. She cannot remain idle, which is the entire reason why her mother acquiesced to train her in her spying and intelligence ways from a young age.

But then her mother tells her that she's found a new teacher, someone who will have no trouble introducing the young girl to so much more. One who can give her a world in which she will forever be opening doors to new experiences, and never run out of things to do, goals to accomplish. One who may understand her more than her own flesh and blood.

Melinda is so excited that she can barely bring herself to sit still during the days until his arrival.

"I don't approve of his chosen profession," her mother says on the eve of the day that they're to meet this 'him', "but I approve of _him_."

* * *

His name is Feng. Melinda knows enough that it's not truly his name, but it's the one he gives her. She's instantly distrustful of the man in his traditional clothing. He will stick out like a sore thumb in places that is not China, especially here in America, and that Melinda is of the opinion that this is not something she wants in a teacher.

He claims to come from Hong Kong, but his name and default language scream Standard Mandarin or Huayu instead of Cantonese.

He's far too easy-going, too relaxed, too kind, too _soft_. He does not kill, and tells her that he will not teach her how to kill, and he never gives her any reason as to why. And yet he freely admits that he has roots in the Triads of Hong Kong, and that they call on him when they're in need of a 'specialist'.

What kind of teacher has her mother gotten her?

She was expecting an old wise man, but instead she has someone who is barely a decade older than herself, and possibly the biggest hypocrite in the world.

What is she to learn from someone like this? She doesn't appreciate this situation, and shows it by being as destructive as possible. She's as contradictory as possible, and has no qualms about keeping her temper in check in front of him, especially when he brings her to Hong Kong in order to train in specially-made facilities for an indefinite amount of time.

But he smiles in an infuriating way whenever she acts out, and it makes her destroy more things in retaliation.

* * *

The first time Melinda disintegrates something with violent red fire, she's weeks away from turning fourteen, and almost destroys the entire practice room her master has appropriated for her because assassins have come calling for her and her teacher. She doesn't _burn_ the masked and armed men, but instead causes the mysterious red fire to transfer onto every available surface and can only watch as it eats through material like acid. Even rock and steel. Even skin and bone.

Then her teacher arrives and burns away her fire with his own, and the sight makes her breath catch in her throat. Unlike her weak, miserable, dull flames, his are _beautiful_ , brilliant and dance with so many shades of red that she cant put a name to all of them.

She's never seen anything like it, and she watches the spectacle with so much intent that spots are in her eyes when the flames die down with a wave of Feng's hand.

He doesn't scold her for such a thing, but instead smiles a smile behind one large sleeve and looks at her with pride and maybe just a bit of regret.

Regret over what? Regret that she killed two assassins and maimed the rest with her out-of-control fire?

He asks her for her account of the events leading up to the fire, and after several misleading and purposefully vague replies that he ignores, she admits that she's been thinking of getting into the same field as her mother, working in an intelligence agency. She cant do that if she's dead, so she has to stay alive no matter what. When he asks her _why_ , she admits it's because she's seen so much growing up that she wants to protect.

"Protect what?"

"What I can."

In a surprising gesture, he places his hand on her head and tells her that he will definitely teach her how to do just that.

She calls him Sifu, her master, from that moment on.

* * *

The fire she draws out is called Dying Will Flame, and that it, surprise surprise, manifests most often when one is in danger of dying. That it's not actually fire, no matter what it's called or how it looks. That it's a literal representation of her will, her resolve to fight, but that not everyone can call it out because it takes a special kind of inner strength to be able to do so.

It makes sense, because otherwise the knowledge of such Flames would be more common, and there would be more people with multicolored Flames walking around on the streets. He tells her that Flames, no matter how beautiful, are dangerous things, and must not be mentioned to anyone because they are a power that only a few should wield. If awakened by the wrong hands, who knows what will happen. Let the criminal underworld keep their secrets, and let the criminals use their Flames against other Flame using criminals, he says.

Secrets are difficult to keep for someone with her temperament, but she promises not to tell anyway.

"The stronger your body and mind, the brighter, purer and more powerful your Flames are," he tells her, and she thinks he must be _powerful_ , because whenever she thinks of that time when he subdued her wayward Flames with his own, she thinks of art in motion. She thinks of watching a master artist as he paints with nothing but shades of red.

Sifu says that they share an affinity, and that their Flame is just one of seven-- the green Lightning that hardens, the yellow Sun that heals and stimulates, the violet Cloud that grows and multiplies, the blue Rain that calms, the indigo Mist that creates, and the rarest of them all, the orange Sky that harmonizes and brings them all together. Theirs is the red Storm, the most violent and dangerous if applied incorrectly because its special attribute is disintegration, and is far more effective than any element made solely for breaking things apart until there's nothing left. It's better than the most powerful acid, the most effective poison.

It's also one of the most difficult to keep contained, next to the Mist that turns fiction into reality and can be difficult to harness without the right mindset, and the Sky that has so many layers that even Sky Flame users have trouble awakening to their true power.

Thus, Sifu advices her to not try and drag out her Flames, saying that it's too dangerous without special equipment or years and years of training-- equipment that only a handful of Italian mafia families have, and training that Sifu himself has achieved only just recently.

The one time she completely disregards his warnings and tries to manifest her Flames, she hurts her hand so badly that she almost loses it. She comes out with her fingers intact, but with an ugly scar spreading all across the back of her hand and wrist as a testament to her disregard for personal safety. Melinda still has full mobility of her hand, but sensation is limited, and the scar aches whenever the temperature drops.

She's never seen Sifu so angry, especially at her. She's never seen him angry, period, and resolves never to do so again, because an angry Feng is close to a demon on earth as anyone can get.

Melinda thinks that her mother has known about her Storm Flames for a while, because it cant be a coincidence she's chosen Feng of all people to be her mentor.

* * *

Sifu has a tattoo, a stylized black Chinese dragon that winds itself around his left arm and rests its head just above his heart.

It's his symbol, he tells her-- it helps him control his Storm Flames because he keeps the image in his mind as he manifests and molds his Flames into a powerful attack. She can believe that, because not once has he lost control of his Flames, and they're almost always in the form of a dragon when he fights with them.

The dragon on his chest, to be exact. By having it inked on him, he's always reminded of what his Dying Will should look like.

Melinda wants something like that, because her Flames are still so out of control.

For her fifteenth birthday, Sifu brings her to the tattoo artist that drew his dragon. She has her own placed on her back, and reasons that she'll never be wearing dresses anyway, much less backless ones. And even if she does, it will only be for undercover missions and she can brush off any curiosity by saying that she had a wild youth.

Mom sighs, rolls her eyes and tells her that she _is_ a wild youth when she gets back home and proudly shows it to her. Melinda cant really refute that. However, Sifu tells Mom that he'll teach her how to master that ferocious nature of hers so that she can be the best she can ever be.

* * *

One day, a little after she turns sixteen, he brings her with him on one of his assignments with some 'colleagues', like it's Bring Your Child To Work Day. Melinda knows that her mother is not pleased about this, if her staunch refusal to hear anything about it is any indication. After all, her mother is part of an agency that keeps the peace, and Melinda is going to rub shoulders with assassins, thieves, mercenaries and all sorts of criminals for a few days.

She doesn't ask why, because she's sure Sifu wont bother answering her.

His 'colleagues' are… a mixed bunch, like the chirashi sushi he made her try when they were touring Japan two summers ago. The longer Melinda stays with them, the more she realizes that they are exactly seven people. One person for each Flame.

The Sun user is an Italian who goes by the name Reborn, and he looks like the stereotypical mobster from movies, suit and fedora and all. He claims he's the world's greatest hitman, and attempts to flirt with Melinda with this very line (just for kicks, he claims later) until Sifu grabs him by the wrist and tells him with a bright smile that he will not hesitate to disintegrate all of the man's favorite weapons if he does that again.

The Mist user is Viper, an enigma wrapped up in a dark hood and cloak, and loves money more than life itself. Melinda is not sure if Viper is male or female, and thinks that she probably never will find the answer to that question.

The Lightning user is a scientist called Verde, and he has no qualms about speaking highly of himself. He's probably justified on that point, because the man is frighteningly intelligent and blows her out of the water-- and she's no pushover, if her grades in school are anything to go by. His rivalry with Reborn can get tiresome though.

The Cloud user is a biker and stuntman named Skull, and he's the youngest out of all of them, only slightly older than Melinda herself. He is far more immature though, and has a habit of alternatively whining about his treatment under Reborn, and boasting of this and that achievement. At first he strikes her as full of hot air, but when they spar for the first time, she accidentally loses control of her Flames. She think she's killed him, but he's surprisingly alive despite getting a blast of Storm Flames to the heart, and that's when she finds out he's immortal, or something close to it.

The Rain user is Lal Mirch, a soldier who holds her head up high and has no tolerance for shenanigans. Sifu tells her that she's the leader of an elite Italian military unit called COMSUBIN (despite her intelligence, the exact name of the force eludes Melinda because it's all in Italian), and has allowed her own apprentice to accompany her to this meeting.

His name is Colonello, and he's another Rain user. He's loud and brash with an unusual verbal tic of saying 'hey'. She thinks he's annoying-- at least, until he admits to her in private that he's worried about Lal Mirch and wants to be around just in case something bad happens. He doesn't admit that he also has a soft spot for Lal, but he doesn't have to. Sifu has been teaching her how to be observant.

The Sky user and leader is Luce, who is also the boss of a mafia family called Giglio Nero. However, she defies all conventions of a mafia boss, and instead of being ruthless, cold and pragmatic, she's warm, caring and almost motherly, and accepts Melinda from the first minute. The older woman even presents her with all sorts of foods such as cookies, tea, coffee, and cake the moment she's introduced, and holds her like a long lost friend.

And of course, there's her master and their Storm user, Feng, widely acclaimed as the greatest martial artist and rumored to stop bullets with his bare hands. Even if this is a ridiculous rumor, and that some people may have been watching far too many movies, Melinda is not going to be surprised if he actually does catch a bullet.

They call him _Fon_ for some reason, probably because they cant pronounce his name. Or probably because Sifu intentionally introduced himself to them that way.

Collectively, they're known as the Il Prescelti Sette or the Selective Seven, the most powerful people in the current era, and only assemble for certain missions assigned by a man only known as Checker Face, or the Man in the Iron Hat. They've been meeting each other for almost a year, but they hardly ever speak to each other outside of their work for their mysterious employer.

When Sifu brings her in as a guest and observer, they all regard her with a mix of curiosity, apprehension and annoyance (disdain, in Verde's case, who has no interest in 'snot-nosed brats'). Only Luce and Skull are warm to her from the beginning, but Lal Mirch takes her aside on the third day.

"Can you shoot a gun?" Lal Mirch asks.

Melinda shakes her head.

Before Melinda can even say anything, the soldier woman has dragged her out back, shoving a pistol into her hand and forcing her to shoot at a specific leaf of a specific tree. Every time she handles the gun wrong or misses her target, she gets whacked upside the head. Hard.

"Martial arts are all well and good in a pinch," she says after walking Melinda through proper gun care, "but in this world, guns are the weapons you're most likely to see in a fight. If you want to survive in the career you want to get into, you need use a gun, and use it _well._ "

How Lal Mirch knows that she's intending to get into an intelligence agency, she doesn't know. But it's a stupid question when you're surrounded by who are arguably the most powerful people in the world, those who can get any kind of information by either gathering it themselves or pulling strings with the right people.

So all she can say to that is, "Yes ma'am."

* * *

"Luce."

They're listening to the comms, to the sounds of the rest of the Il Prescelti Sette-- plus Colonello-- sneaking into enemy territory, guided by Verde's hacked information and Luce's directions. The mission is to infiltrate and rob an American mafia family of their treasures (actual, solid _gold_ , among other things), and get out as quietly as possible. As a guest and observer into the lives of professional criminals, Melinda has to sit with their Sky at base and guard her if necessary.

Not that she has any problem with that, but her curiosity gets the best of her and she mutes her comm to speak to the older woman.

Luce takes one look at her face, and does the same. "Yes, Melinda?"

Melinda asks her why she's with this group of highly dangerous individuals and is going on highly dangerous missions with them when she's heavily pregnant and likely to give birth in the next few weeks.

The older woman only gives her a sad, sad smile, and, in what seems to be an unconscious action, places her hand on her large belly.

Melinda doesn't press for answers, no matter how much she wants to. But not asking leaves her itchy, angry and annoyed, with her restlessness at _not getting the answer she wants_ tempered only slightly from her training under Sifu's patient guidance flaring up again, and she excuses herself to go practice her gun aim a little more.

When she runs out of bullets, she peeks through the window and watches Luce at work. What she sees surprises her. Despite the smile on her face, the look in her eyes is stern and focused on the task at hand.

Melinda appreciates how in control of the situation she is despite not being able to see what's going on, and how varied (and clashing) everyone's personalities are. Reborn and Verde don't make it a secret that they hate each other, and Reborn in particular makes it a point to do the opposite of everything Verde says. With Luce calling the shots though, she brooks no disobedience and he has no choice but to follow orders.

She doesn't even yell or snap-- all she does is speak in an even tone, with the full weight of her expectations bearing down on the person she's speaking to, and they scramble to get their jobs done.

It's because of this sight that Melinda now knows why Luce is both boss of a mafia family, and undisputed leader of the seven most powerful individuals in the world.

When Melinda slinks back into the room, feeling embarrassed for letting her temper get the best of her, Luce only smiles and puts a hand on her arm and asks if she's ready to continue with her Italian lessons.

Skull, on the comm, suggests a word in Italian that she's fairly sure is something rude, and Luce admonishes him with a smile on her face before telling Melinda that she shouldn't repeat that word. In polite company anyway.

And then, with the comm muted again, she teaches Melinda how to get revenge on people who get on her bad side without actually resorting to violence-- pranking. Luce walks her through her first prank, and smiles at her proudly when Reborn tries not to lose his temper when he finds out that his shaving cream has been replaced with whipped cream.

* * *

The mission is over before she realizes it, and she has to say goodbye to her teacher's colleagues. He drops her off at home, and she spends the rest of the day enduring Mom's concern. And then it's back to their old routine-- she goes to school, comes back home to drop off her things, and then it's off to one of the warehouses at the outskirts of the city to train with Sifu.

The one highlight though is a long-distance phone call from Luce, informing Sifu of the birth of her daughter Aria, and he passes this knowledge onto her. Melinda feels irrationally happy for the rest of the week.

The following week, he visits her to say that he's been called away again by Checker Face, and that this is one mission she cannot come with because it's far too dangerous. She wants to complain, but understands she's no longer a child to be catered to.

Days pass since Sifu's left for that one mission. Then weeks. Then months.

Mother's contacts in the criminal underworld come up empty, because he leaves no paper trail or evidence behind. His place in Hong Kong has been rented out to a newlywed couple. Triad members keep mum about any news of him. For all intents and purposes, it's like Feng, the greatest martial artist of the era, has dropped off the face of the earth.

At first, Melinda refuses to believe he's died, and has several flaming (but not Flaming) rows with her mother over that. Then they grow cold towards each other, until Melinda spends more time outside the house than inside it.

Sometimes she trains, sometimes she tries to look for him on her own. But she always comes up empty-handed. When she attempts to contact Lal Mirch because the COMSUBIN seems easier to approach than Luce's mafia family, she finds that Lal Mirch is also missing. And not just Lal, but Colonello too, which is a huge surprise, and Melinda comes to the conclusion that all of the Il Prescelti Sette have gone the same way, whatever it is.

Her best lead becomes Checker Face, but the man might as well be a ghost-- no one knows who he is.

When she's rebuffed by COMSUBIN the next time she calls, she stops attempting to contact them, and then reality finally sinks in.

The entirety of the Il Prescelti Sette is gone, and she's only met them just the once.

But one time is enough to burn all of them and their power into her memory for life. Like Sifu, their Flames are strong, bright, and utterly breathtaking, even Colonello who's just a student like her. When brought to life at night, they can put the Northern Lights to shame. They give Melinda dreams about rainbows randomly throughout the rest of her life.

* * *

Even without Sifu, life goes on.

She makes up with her mother over her outburst.

She gets her tattoo touched up every so often because she's determined never to let it disappear.

She refines the art of pranking that Luce started in her. Eventually it also becomes a way for her to show affection that she's too proud to give outright.

She finally learns how to manifest her Storm Flames on her hands and feet. Melinda still cant fight like her master could, but she can break through a lot of things with what she has. It's a start.

She moves from handguns to other kinds of guns, and keeps on improving her aim.

She graduates high school with honors (not valedictorian though, because she's not interested in graduation speeches).

She gets snapped up by the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division, and happily goes along with it because she thinks she's found what she's been looking for. Mom's not impressed because she wanted to bring Melinda into her own agency, but decides that any counter-terrorism is better than terrorism. But Melinda is over the moon, because this is the secret counter-terrorism and intelligence agency founded by former members of the Strategic Scientific Reserve-- also known as _the_ agency responsible for HYDRA's destruction all the way back in World War II. How can she not be pleased with that?

She goes through one rigorous training regiment after another and breaks all their records. It makes people think she's some kind of prodigy, a genius, but what they put her through is honestly nothing compared to what she's experienced under the tutelage of her master. And of course, Lal Mirch is secretly credited for her proficiency with firearms, because if the woman hadn't started her training in that field, she wouldn't be half as good as she is now.

She meets several fellow agents through her stay, including one Maria Hill who's younger than herself but is looking to make some waves as well. Mom has taken a liking to Maria, and approves of this particular friendship. Phil Coulson, on the other hand, receives a slightly more lukewarm reception.

She takes up piloting, just for kicks, because she thinks that flying would be exhilarating. And she's right.

She thinks she's finally where she wants to be, and resolves to be an agent that the Division can be proud of.

However, she never tells them that she has-- _used to have_ \-- connections to the criminal underworld via her old teacher, and that she can give physical, tangible form to her resolution as a result of her intensive training. She can tell who has the potential though-- she can sometimes feel Flames flickering underneath a person's skin when she passes them by. Maria is one of them. Phil and Director Fury are two others, and so is Alexander Pierce. Melinda even identified former agent Peggy Carter herself when she met the woman that one time. Unsurprisingly, Carter is the one with the strongest Flame potential, and Melinda will put money on her Flames actually being active.

Curiously, Barton and Romanoff, when they get recruited later on, don't have the same despite their strong personalities.

Sometimes she thinks of telling someone about this, but she holds off because she's pretty sure that she'll be asked to train agents in that method of fighting. For one, she doesn't know how to force people to manifest their Flames, and she knows that attempting to kill her fellow agents in order to do so will be looked down on. For another, she remembers the promise she made to Sifu not to tell anyone unless given permission-- Dying Will Flames are the power of the criminal underworld, and must stay in the underworld, because if word gets out, there's no telling what will happen. Maybe World War III, except instead of weapons of mass destruction, they'll have _people_ of mass destruction.

And, she reasons to herself, even if she breaks all other promises during her tenure as an agent and professional spy, she'll never break the promises she made to her teacher. After all, they don't count-- she made them _before_ she joined the agency that really needs a shorter name.

* * *

When Melinda is established as an excellent agent, and is on one of her rare visits to her childhood home, she finds that there's a baby sitting on the dining table, drinking tea and chatting with her mother.

For one horrifying moment, she thinks that her mother's managed to have a new child in her absence, but when she calms down just a little and sees things as they are, she realizes quite a lot.

Like how babies are not supposed to be able to speak so eloquently. Or that they drink milk, not tea.

Like how they're not usually accompanied by small, red-faced monkeys.

Like how they do not look or sound like men who are supposed to be missing, and have been missing for years.

"Where have you _been_ ," she hisses as soon as he greets her, her volatile Storm Flames bubbling underneath her skin, just waiting to be let out. And honestly, Mom's house or not, she's so, so tempted to do just that.

Immediately her mother rises from her seat and grips her shoulder tightly, and Melinda feels _calm_ seep through her clothes, into her muscles and settle deep into her body until a good deal of the tension she's been holding in disappears.

She blinks at her mother, realizing that she's feeling _Rain Flames_. She's never been on the receiving end of the Rain's tranquility attribute and she's never seen Rain Flames outside of those generated by Lal Mirch and Colonello, but this feeling is unmistakeable.

(A triumphant thought in her head says that she finally has proof of something she's been suspicious about for years.)

"We have much to talk about," Sifu says as he places his mug on the table and stands. "Lian, if you please…?"

Mom leaves them alone-- leaves the house even and tells them to call her office if they need her. This leaves them free to talk for hours and hours about what has happened in the past couple of years.

Sifu tells her that the mission he had left her behind for was a dud, that it was not a mission at all. The Il Prescelti Sette had to climb to the top of a small mountain to retrieve some kind of treasure for Checker Face, but instead of treasure, a bright light that suddenly flashed over all of them. When it dissipated, they all found themselves in their current forms, as _babies_ , with pacifiers in colors corresponding to their Flame hanging around their necks.

Colonello had been there too, and took Lal Mirch's place at the last minute, which landed him with the blue pacifier. Despite his intervention, Lal bore scars on her face and her own grey pacifier to show the she too suffered from the curse, albeit an incomplete one.

Without any more correspondence from Checker Face, it was all too obvious that this was the intended result all along and the Il Prescelti Sette, now called the Arcobaleno after Luce used the term to refer to them, scattered. He says that 'arcobaleno' is the Italian word for 'rainbow', and she thinks it fits.

He also tells her that Luce has been missing for a while, and that they think her dead. In her absence, Aria has taken up not only the position of Giglio Nero boss, but also the Sky Arcobaleno. It's such a burden for one so young, especially when the other Arcobaleno had been older when they were chosen.

It's an unbelievable tale. It's _insane_ , one that should only be found in fairy tales or comic books. And yet… And yet Sifu has never lied to her. He's been vague, and sometimes refuses to answer her outright, but he never lies.

So she has to believe him.

Melinda feels sorry for Luce and her young daughter. Aria had been less than a week old when her own mother got turned into an infant herself. And now she's likely lost her mother and is picking up the pieces left behind.

With surprising agility for one in the body of an infant, Sifu jumps onto her shoulder and places a hand on her cheek. A tiny, tiny hand with pudgy fingers that will only barely close around one of her fingers, she thinks.

"I apologize for not telling you immediately," he says softly. "I was… lost, and completely unsure of myself. If I had gone to see you during those first few years, I probably wouldn't have been able to save face."

Melinda wants to be cold, wants to tell him to fuck right off and leave, but she's too warm to be angry at him forever. So she forgives him.

"We are wild," he tells her as they watch the sunset together. "We are the howling wind that batters windows, we are the harbingers of rain and lightning, we are the typhoon that comes and goes when we are least expected, leaving destruction and loss in our wake. But we are not truly strong until we learn to control the storm that rages within us, otherwise we will burn out far too quickly."

She looks at him skeptically, one eyebrow barely raised. Control and typhoons are two things that should never be placed together-- they naturally contradict each other because control is simply a word, and typhoons are a part of nature, unpredictable and as impossible to contain as sand in a sieve. But he smiles at her in the way that always says he knows all the answers she doesn't.

"You'll understand in time."

The next day, Sifu disappears from her life a second time, but she decides not to look for him again. She understands a goodbye when she hears one.

* * *

But it's not completely goodbye. While she doesn't know how to contact him, he has no problems in managing to contact _her_. He occasionally tells her about important Arcobaleno business, and sometimes even personal business.

Not long after they part ways, she gets a letter on rice paper that says his niece has given birth to a baby boy. A picture accompanies the letter, and in it is undoubtedly the niece in question, her husband, and a newborn with a tuft of hair so black that he looks more like Sifu than either of his parents who both have dark brown hair.

Days after her wedding, she receives a letter with beautiful, sweeping calligraphy that cant be anything but his, congratulating her on her marriage.

After her divorce, she gets another letter saying he'd gladly teach her ex-husband a lesson if she'd only let him.

* * *

When she gets the nickname 'The Cavalry', Melinda spares a moment to think about what Sifu would have said about that. He probably would have smiled. She doesn't honestly know-- he's the most unpredictable man she's ever met.

But it doesn't matter right now. What matters is that she takes herself out of the field, because she cant do this anymore.

On her new desk, she finds mail in that Xuan paper Sifu loves so much. It's short, the shortest letter he's ever sent to her, containing only a single line.

_Keep the storm controlled, but do not ever let it die out._

Unlike the letters of before that she keeps safe and unharmed in a small lacquered cherry wood box in her personal safe, Melinda shoves this one into her pocket without ceremony. When she puts it into storage later, it comes out more than a little crumpled, but she cant bring herself to care.

She's locked every ability to give a damn so far back that even her Flames become unreachable. But that's a good thing, she thinks, because she'd rather be cold and angry instead of having a metaphorical super typhoon making her heart beat fast all the time.

(And then years and years later, Phillip fucking Coulson comes and drags her back into the field under the guise of being his pilot, god damn it.)

* * *

When she touches the Berserker Staff, she finally understands what he meant when he told her all those years ago about controlled typhoons.

Because she bottles up all of her anger and rage but never lets the storm in her die down in her guilt, she can keep her sanity despite the Staff's attempts to take over her mind and turn her into a wild raving animal.

For the first time in such a long time, she feels _free_ , her Flames coming to her so easily when she calls for them like they're joyful to be let out after so many years. And yet they don't run wild like before, but blaze through the path she set out for them. They run along the Staff, but don't disintegrate the young men and women who have tried to keep the Asgardian weapon for themselves. Unlike before, when her Flames would eat through anything and everything without discrimination.

And when Coulson gives her the order to 'bring the house down', she doesn't use the Staff at all. She drops it and throws her Storm Flames around, and watches as the brilliant representations of her Will in varying shades of red literally brings it all down.


	2. What the hell is up with this weather?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is where the "Canon Divergence" tag comes in for both canons. I haven't watched AOS season 2 yet, and it shows. I'm aware of some things that happen, but I've decided to just disregard that. Meanwhile, on the KHR side, I've taken a lot of liberties because of the setting. _A lot._ Such as changing certain events, fucking around with the timeline, and more. And I have no regrets.
> 
> Also, if anyone catches even one of the many stealth crossovers and references I've thrown in here, treat yourself to a slice of chocolate cake. You've earned it.
> 
> Like before, if you're familiar with only one canon and you don't understand something from the other, or if you just want to ask about the fic in general, feel free to ask me for clarification.

Melinda May is nearing fifty, with streaks of grey in her hair, and finally retiring from active duty (officially, and there's no going back onto the field, fuck you very much Director Coulson). She's looking forward to overseeing the training of several of their rookie generations to come.

Unfortunately, around the same time Melinda retires, some upstart named Byakuran of the Gesso famiglia has just made a mess of the Italian mafia world, and people are beginning to panic. He's been steadily growing in power for a while, but he's just absorbed the Giglio Nero into his family, turning it into the Millefiore. The _Giglio Nero_. _Luce and Aria's_ Giglio Nero, which was left to young Yuni when Aria passed away not too long ago.

There's no way Yuni would have agreed to something like that, so Melinda suspects foul play and works to get ahold of Feng in between dealing with younger agents and S.H.I.E.L.D.'s newbies, and the amount of paperwork that comes with her new position.

Over the months, Melinda hears how the Millefiore has been leaving a trail of bodies and blood of the mafia families that dared oppose it, and taking in those who raise the white flag. But more than that, she hears rumors that Yuni is not the only Arcobaleno that this Byakuran is going after.

* * *

When Byakuran kills his first Arcobaleno and takes the Pacifier for himself a year after she hears talk about him for the first time, Melinda disappears from S.H.I.E.L.D. without telling anyone, effectively going MIA, because she cant let this stand. She thought they were just rumors, but with this piece of news, she cant sit around and do nothing.

He killed Skull. _Skull_ , for god's sake, the one who's supposed to be immortal, the only one out of the Arcobaleno who should have been able to survive anything that Byakuran threw at him. But Skull is _dead_ , and there's no doubt that this Byakuran person is a force to be reckoned with. Melinda wont deny it's also a good way to get the attention of everyone in the criminal underworld, killing the one unkillable person in the entire community. He definitely has _her_ attention.

And then the bastard goes and announces to the criminal underworld that he has plans of taking over, and doesn't really care if they're all going against him because he's collecting the Pacifiers for their power, and all Melinda can go is groan and think that _this is going to be one of those times_.

First things first: She has to find Feng.

Along the way, she picks up new equipment, several rings sporting dark red gems that the mafia uses, and they help her channel her Storm Flames more easily. She also grabs a Box Weapon, something Verde and two scientist friends of his created for the mafia to use in their inter-family wars. Melinda doesn't know how exactly they work, or _why_ small cubes actually hold items and artificial animals filled with Flames within them (which is a whole 'nother can of worms that she's not going to touch), but they do. It helps that the Box Weapon she's stolen from the Millefiore is a Storm one, and while she hasn't used a staff since the whole mess with the Berserker staff, it's better than nothing.

She reunites with her master in Hong Kong months later, just in time for a fight in the middle of Admiralty that destroys several buildings and kills so many innocents. The local Triads attempt to fight off the Italians, but most are without the ability to use Flames, so they're hopelessly outmatched. Only Melinda and Feng are able to make a dent in the Millefiore numbers, whirling around like twin cyclones of angry Storm red. He's still an infant and has less than half of his old Flame capacity, but that still doesn't stop him from being more powerful than her.

At least, until the head of that particular Millefiore squad arrives and does something that makes Feng drop to the ground like a puppet with cut strings. There's some kind of device in the mafioso's hand, no doubt the source of whatever's hurting her teacher and old friend, but she has trouble getting to the bastard because he's flying in the sky using a pair of jet boots that make use of Flames to propel the wearer through the air.

 _Jet boots._ FitzSimmons would have a field day with that. Too bad she cant tell her codependent science colleagues about it.

But when there's a will, especially a _Will_ , there's a way, and Melinda manages a concentrated blast of Storm Flames that takes out the man's entire arm, effectively destroying the device. She's just about to blast the goddamned Italian out of the sky when she feels a tug on her pant leg, prompting her to look down. Feng is tucking his Pacifier into the pocket of her cargo pants, and smiling up at her when she catches him.

"Take it and go," he tells her. "You're its owner now, so run, and let me deal with this, my beloved student. And if you see my dear great-nephew, please tell him that I'm sorry."

She's too shocked at being called such a name that she reacts too slowly when he shoves her away and launches himself at the squad leader in a huge burst of Flame.

Melinda knows she's looking at a kamikaze strike, her _teacher's_ final strike, but she cant bear to look away until the resulting explosion knocks her and everyone around her off their feet.

* * *

True to Feng's final wishes, Melinda runs and hides. She calls up every last bit of S.H.I.E.L.D. agent training in her and evades the Millefiore to the best of her ability. Her first move is to get the hell out of Hong Kong and into the Philippines, another place where she might be able to fit into the crowd of the many Chinese tourists and expats, where the mafia might not be able to exert its power too much.

She doesn't stay in that hot, humid place for long though. Any agent worth their salt knows that's suicide.

Her next stop is Australia-- not one specific city, but the entire country. She jumps from area to area randomly to throw any pursuer off her trail.

She hears that Byakuran pitched a huge fit over not getting the Storm Pacifier from one of her contacts while she's in Perth, and grins to herself in vindictive glee.

But for some reason, they still keep finding her. She swears she follows every rule in the book, and even some that aren't on it, but the Millefiore gangsters still manage to take her by surprise. More than once, she only just manages to escape with her life.

She goes around wearing at least one Storm ring on her right hand at any given time because it's much faster than sticking her hand into her pocket to get the ring and placing it on her finger. With this, she can skip directly to grabbing her Box and releasing her weapon.

Her pragmatism is rewarded when the next Millefiore goon ambushes her in Tasmania, and she surprises him with the butt of her Storm staff to the jet boots, Storm Flames eating away at the circuitry inside and leaving him grounded.

But then he releases his Box Weapon, and it's an Animal. A peregrine falcon to be exact, and Melinda knows she's in trouble. Real falcons are the fastest animals when they dive, and this one is not just a falcon, but a falcon that can emit Storm Flames from every feather on its body.

Melinda nearly dies in this fight. The falcon is so fast that she only barely manages to dodge its dives, giving its owner ample opportunity to attack her from behind. And of course, when she manages to fend _him_ off, the falcon comes back around and its Flames manage to graze her on the right side of her neck, creating a painful burning sensation from her collarbone all the way to her cheek, like the way her hand felt all those years ago when she foolishly tried to call on her Flames when Feng told her not to until she had more training. And just like that disastrous attempt, she has no doubt that it's going to scar.

At the end of the skirmish, Melinda takes the dead Storm's Box Weapon for herself, and names the falcon Typhoon in honor of her dead master. Melinda has no idea how Box Animals really work, and she's never actually had a Box Animal before, but this fight made her realize that she _needs_ one if she's to survive. He's not going to be using it anymore, so there's no reason not to relieve the corpse of his Box Animal. Then she goes off to look for medical attention because she admits to herself that she cant take care of her injuries on her own.

It's like running and hiding from HYDRA all over again, but this time, all she has is a pocket full of Storm Rings, two Storm Box Weapons, miscellaneous things that she's picked up here and there, and the Storm Pacifier that's more conspicuous than a target painted on her back.

She's getting too old for this shit.

* * *

She doesn't want to go back to the States because S.H.I.E.L.D. is still there and she knows Coulson will have her dragged back kicking and screaming if she's discovered. If that happens, the Millefiore will be on them in a heartbeat, and they may not be ready for that. They know aliens, they know super-humans. But they're not ready for experienced criminals ordered around by a young man who is possibly an even greater madman than the Skull. HYDRA was full of brainwashed, utterly loyal soldiers who used alien tech, but Millefiore-- and the rest of organized crime by default-- is full of individuals who are literally burning up from within because of their Wills, and can access powers that regular people only dream of.

But what other choice does Melinda have?

True enough, the moment Phil catches wind of her, he doesn't allow her to run away again. Instead he sits her down (in an interrogation room, smart) and calmly asks her what the hell she's been doing for the past year.

Using that exact line.

And she tells him how she's become embroiled in a worldwide mafia war, all because her old mentor, master and teacher was a well-known figure in the criminal underworld and introduced her to some of the best and most powerful mobsters of their generation when she was younger. Hell, Coulson even reveals that he knows 'Fon' the mercenary of the Triads by the way his eyes widen oh so slightly when she says his name.

"I shouldn't be surprised. You learned everything from him, didn't you?" he says as he gathers up the notepad she'd been writing details of the Millefiore on.

"Not quite. Lal Mirch of the COMSUBIN taught me how to use a gun, and deliver sarcasm politely."

At that, he just rubs his temples. _Of course_ he's heard of that name too.

He all but orders her to form a unit of people with Wills that are already active and put them under intensive training to make them Flame-active, the official S.H.I.E.L.D. designation for people who can control their Flames. The unit itself is, fittingly, dubbed Forecast.

Bobbi Morse, the Mockingbird, is her first pick, and Melinda finds out that she's a Lightning when she tests her by pretending to punch her in the throat with Storm Flames only to get repelled by a barrier of green light. She's confused until Melinda tells her that Lightning is all about hardening and defense, but with enough training she can channel Lightning Flames into her stun batons like real electricity.

Clair Kelly is their second Lightning, but she's a hand-to-hand fighter like herself, and Melinda knows she needs to look for some kind of gauntlet-type Box Weapon for her, if any exist out there.

Johnny Wolf, affectionately known as Galaga Guy to his fellow Helicarrier survivors, is one of their Mists. The other is a new girl Melinda personally trained before she went MIA, Alexis Mason. Wolf is shifty and a huge slacker, and Mason likes horror movies just a little too much, but both of them have the potential to be master illusionists like Viper, and Melinda thinks they'll be just fine.

One of the best blade handlers in S.H.I.E.L.D. is another rookie named Makoto Shogo, and he's their only Cloud. He quickly realizes that he can multiply his knives indefinitely as long as he has the Flame capacity to keep going, and Melinda is glad he's on _their_ side.

Antoine Triplett becomes their Sun, and she's pleased to see another familiar face. He tells her he has to get used to being the medic for once, after hearing how Sun Flame users are typically the healers, but is glad he can apply Sun Flames to other things. His fellow Sun is Noel Crisostomo, who joined S.H.I.E.L.D a few years before Melinda retired so she doesn't know what he's like, but she's going to _make_ him perform well regardless.

Akela Amador, returning from probation, tests positive as a fellow Storm and Melinda is pleased with that because she knows firsthand how strong Amador is. It's a shame they don't have more Storms though, considering they're primarily a strike team and Storm Flames are some of the best when it comes to sheer offensive power.

The Flame type they have the most users for is Rain, and Melinda manages to find four of them-- Cora Chaudhri, Noelani Headley, Ray Fischer, and Wallace Siebold. For one fleeting moment, Melinda wishes her mother wasn't dead so she can call her and ask for advice on handling and training all of these Rains, but she knows there's no point in thinking that.

Barton and Romanoff are of course not chosen to be part of the unit, but they hide their disappointment well. Skye, FitzSimmons and Billy Koenig are more obvious with their dismay at not making the cut, but Melinda and her new team submit to a battery of non-invasive tests to see how Dying Will Flames actually work to make them happy. At least until Akela accidentally disintegrates some of their equipment.

They don't have a Sky, but realistically, the best chance of them having a Sky user is if someone from certain bloodlines decides to leave the lofty mafia prince or princess life and joins up with the secret agents. Skies are just that rare, and every mafia family that has them make sure that they stay _in_ the family.

Melinda's not a Sky so she knows she'll never be able to be a true leader that binds them all together with Harmony, but she's going to do the best she can. For her team, for S.H.I.E.L.D., for Feng.

She confesses to Phil that he also has the potential, even if she's not sure what his Flame is. She offers to train him too, but he waves it away by saying that he'll leave the fire-starting to the field agents, and looks at her slyly. In retaliation, she blasts a giant hole in his wall and leaves his office through it.

* * *

Forecast's first assignment is to lead away a Millefiore squad that's been bearing down on their location ( _Melinda's_ location), and then take them out.

It goes spectacularly badly.

Oh, it's a mission accomplished, but it takes too long, and they were on the losing side until Phil and Skye managed to arrive and use alien tech to blast the mobsters away.

But it shows them just how weak they are compared to trained mafia soldiers who have been working with Flames all their lives, and if there's one thing S.H.I.E.L.D. hates being, it's unprepared for what's to come.

The don of an American family in Chicago offers his help, to an extent. He refuses to go to war against the Millefiore because he has an entire city to protect by any means necessary, but he offers Melinda's elite unit some Flame equipment. For Melinda herself, he has something extra, something that would render her Pacifier invisible to the Millefiore's radar.

All for a price, of course. S.H.I.E.L.D. is hurting right now, but they'll hurt even more if they don't grab ahold of every resource they can, so they strike a deal with the man. Some of their equipment for training the Chicago gangsters in the fine art of using Flames.

As if Melinda doesn't have enough on her plate.

Her problem with the Millefiore's radar is apparently solved by something called Mammon chains, and that she's supposed to wrap the entire length around her Pacifier. The name does nothing for her until she discovers that Mammon is what the Mist Arcobaleno goes by, and Melinda only knows _one_ person who can be the Mist Arcobaleno-- _Viper_.

Viper probably sold these things for a fortune, but Melinda is not going to complain if they do what they're supposed to. Mafia people are hitmen, thieves and thugs, but they have a whole lot of honor and pride, and she at least trusts them enough not to screw her over in this. Especially this particular don because she can see the resolution to protect his people in his eyes.

(He checks out as a Sky, and a pretty powerful one who just needs to fine-tune his control. Not surprising in the least.)

Mobsters in the west take one look at her and the carnage she leaves behind, and start declaring her Hurricane May. The Triads, Yakuza and other eastern gangsters call her the Wrath of the Vermilion Bird. S.H.I.E.L.D., especially Forecast, keeps on going with the Cavalry jokes. But nothing, _nothing_ enrages and terrifies her as much as the title of _New Storm Arcobaleno_ when one of the Chicago boys accidentally lets the news of her Pacifier slip to the wrong people and word spreads throughout the entire community.

* * *

_Captain America_ has secretly been Flame-active ever since Project Rebirth, and he's a Sun.

Who'd have guessed?

Too bad he refuses the offer to join Forecast.

* * *

Forecast comes across two young Japanese men in Canada. Only one is Flame-active, but he's _powerful_ and lays half of the unit on their backs before they can even light up their rings, and he's only using a pair of steel tonfa to get the job done. His Box Weapon is a tiny pastel purple hedgehog that puffs itself up and literally steamrolls them onto the ground, prompting Melinda to approach the boy, asking if they can talk it out. They don't look like enemies, so there's no point in fighting.

The one who doesn't fight has a truly magnificent pompadour, and the other…

The other, a Cloud, looks eerily like Feng, except with much shorter hair and ice-cold steel grey eyes. His eyes narrow when he spots the Storm Pacifier hanging from her neck, and she knows exactly who he is.

"Kyouya Hibari," she says and makes the hand signal for her team to stand down.

"Melinda May," he shoots back as the Cloud hedgehog nibbles on the tip of one of his fingers, completely uninterested in what's going on around it.

"Your great-uncle asked me to tell you that he was sorry."

"I don't need his apologies."

Somehow she feels that Feng never needed to apologize in the first place, whatever his offenses against his niece's only son are.

* * *

Despite all their best efforts, S.H.I.E.L.D. falls a year after Melinda's return. As much as Forecast tries to hold back the power of Byakuran's forces, they're outnumbered, outclassed, outmatched.

Even with the Mammon chains hiding the Pacifier from radars, they don't hide it from being seen by someone's own two eyes.

The Storm Pacifier is caught on camera by the wrong person, which gets sent to Byakuran in Italy, who sends several of his best squads in order to eliminate S.H.I.E.L.D. and take the Pacifier.

Melinda takes it _hard_ , because more than half of Forecast dies, and only Ray, Noel, and Clair are left of her team. Because Skye loses an eye and becomes paralyzed from the waist down because of the attack. Because Billy was the first death of the battle-- no, _massacre_. Because FitzSimmons is no longer FitzSimmons but just _Jemma Simmons_. Because an entire block of civilians got caught in the crossfire. Because she's the one who brought this problem to S.H.I.E.L.D. in the first place.

Phil is the one who pulls her away from trying to dig through the smoking rubble of what was once their base for survivors (and bodies) and drags her, Skye, Jemma, the last members of Forecast and the remaining S.H.I.E.L.D. agents to a safe house to recuperate. He also somehow gets Maria Hill, Pepper Potts, and Tony Stark to help them out with their medical needs, because even if Noel is a Sun and a decent healer, he cant do everything.

They try to stay together after that, but they eventually decide it's best to scatter for a while, just until Millefiore gets complacent, then they can reform right under Byakuran's nose when he least expects it.

Phil goes to meet up with Fury wherever the hell he is, Skye and Jemma remain with Maria, and Forecast is officially disbanded, its remaining members off to support the other survivors of S.H.I.E.L.D. as they go into hiding. And so Melinda goes back to being on the run.

* * *

She expects her time on the lam to be easier than before with all her equipment and additional training, but it's _not_. Melinda finds herself feeling faint when she passes by New York City to hop onto a quick flight to London, and the weak feeling persists until the plane leaves the airport.

But then her symptoms are back when she gets to London, and she just doesn't understand. All the doctors she visits in the city tell her that she has a clean bill of health for someone of her age, though they cluck over her Storm Flame facial scar that she passes off as the result of getting trapped in a burning building. They just find… nothing that rings any bells.

When she gets out of London and on the road to Belgium with a stolen car, the feeling is gone again.

And comes back when she gets to Brussels.

And disappears again when she's moving towards Cologne.

And comes back _again_ when she's actually in Cologne.

Getting really tired of this crap, Melinda calls up every mafioso she knows to get some kind of explanation.

The Chicago don is the only one who has an answer for her: Radiation. Some kind of radiation being emitted by devices that the Millefiore is putting up in every major city of Europe, North America and some parts of Asia in order to slowly but surely cripple the Arcobaleno. He only knows this because he had secretly hosted Verde the Lightning Arcobaleno for a few days, and the scientist admitted to the don that he invented the radiation-emitting device itself, which had somehow fallen into the hands of the Millefiore and is now being used as the biggest and best weapon against the most powerful Flame users in the world.

He also goes on to give her his condolences, because only a week after seeing Verde off, his body was found by some New Jersey colleagues of his, stripped of its Pacifier, but Melinda's stopped listening when she hears that it only affects the Arcobaleno.

It should be impossible-- Melinda wasn't there on the day Feng and the rest turned into Arcobaleno. She was never turned into a baby like the rest of them. She doesn't have the curse. She's not even anywhere close to the level Feng had been before he died.

Except, she realizes, she might not need to be cursed to be considered an Arcobaleno. Maybe carrying the Pacifier for a long time is enough. Maybe she's now considered one of them because she's Feng's apprentice, shares his Flame type, and had the Pacifier passed onto her.

That scares her more than she cares to admit.

(But she does take a bit to mourn Verde, even if she never knew him all that well.. She doesn't hold him responsible for his creation, no matter how dangerous it is. It's another thing she holds against the Millefiore.)

* * *

After almost two years of hiding from the superpower known as Millefiore, the don of the Vongola family, the man commonly known as Vongola Decimo, _dies_ , and Melinda instantly knows it's the biggest blow to the Millefiore's opposition.

Without their beloved boss, the most powerful criminal organization in the world is sure to fall, and Byakuran will have a straight path to world domination.

Melinda decides she should finally go to Italy and see what the situation is like on the mafia's home grounds. Maybe see what exactly the Vongola is planning to do now that their don is dead. Maybe try and get them to join forces with S.H.I.E.L.D.-- or what's left of it. But having one ally, no matter how crippled, is better than none, and maybe they can have a better chance at winning this war.

But her plans change when she arrives in Valencia, Spain, and comes across a young boy lying unconscious in an alleyway, looking beaten half to death. Unable to just leave him _lying_ there, she moves closer to pick him up and stops dead just a few feet away from him for two reasons-- one, she can feel Dying Will Flames flickering in his body, and two, she can see an envelope with a crest on it lying near him. A crest containing the word 'VONGOLA'.

She whisks the boy away to a hotel room before anyone else notices.

When he wakes up, he's instantly wary, and Melinda notes that he has good instincts-- for a teenager who's probably just started high school, he's well trained. To show him that she means no harm unless he's an enemy of the Vongola, she shows him the Storm Pacifier, and he looks up at her in awe. It makes her a bit uncomfortable.

The boy introduces himself in Italian-accented English as Basil, a junior agent and the apprentice of the head of CEDEF, an agency that considers themselves loyal to Vongola but are outside of the direct line of command. 

This time, she's the one who demands proof of what he's saying is true, that he and by extension CEDEF is not Millefiore-aligned instead, and he says that his mentor and CEDEF's boss is Iemitsu Sawada, Vongola Decimo's father. That one of their members is Lal Mirch, who is in Namimori right now, and Melinda relaxes-- there's no way Lal would be working for an organization with connections to a mafia family that's trying to kill her.

Basil claims that he's on his way to Japan to meet up with the rest of Vongola Decimo's (Sawada-dono, as Basil calls him) most trusted men, his Guardians, for one last stand against Byakuran.

And, she thinks, why the hell not. They have a plan, and she might want in on it.

So with her new traveling partner, they jump to the US and hop onto a flight to Japan to their final destination-- Namimori, Tokyo. It's not easy because they're both well-known faces in organized crime by this point, and when people find out that the CEDEF prodigy and the New Storm Arcobaleno, Hurricane May, are traveling together, they get Millefiore hitmen coming after them left and right.

Melinda's forced to increase her arsenal with a few Storm-coated knives just to take some people out before they get close. Surprisingly, Basil knows how to handle himself well, sporting a strange dagger than can double as a boomerang, and a Rain Dolphin for a Box Animal. His style complements her well, because they're both quick on their feet and his Alfin can stop their enemies in their tracks so that Typhoon can take them out properly.

When Melinda first steps into the town's boundaries she feels… underwhelmed. It feels boring here, quiet. Like nothing truly exciting ever happens. Like there are no mobsters from Italy skulking just outside its borders. It's hard to imagine that a small, sleepy town like this managed to produce some of the most powerful and most feared gangsters in the criminal underworld.

It also happens to be the hometown of the Hibari clan, the family Feng's niece married into-- the hometown of his great-nephew and young lookalike. The violent young man with the hedgehog. _And_ who fills the position as Vongola Decimo's Cloud.

She wonders if she'll see him here.

But first things first-- Basil is tiring, and they need to get to shelter. They need to get to the local Vongola base to rest and recuperate. And Melinda will not lie, her health is not the best either. The radiation feels particularly strong in Namimori, like there's a device around every corner, and she's quickly losing her strength.

Because Basil is the one with the directions to this secret Vongola base, she has no choice but to follow him. He leads them all the way to the forest in the outskirts of town, near a grassy knoll surrounded by trees and she's about to suggest turning around and looking elsewhere when a panel at the side of the mound opens and out comes a group of teenagers.

"Sawada-dono!"

And her first thought is " _oh hell no_ ". They're not going into a mafia base filled with teenagers. No. What the hell is with the Vongola, making kids fight their battles?

Basil though, he's beside himself with joy and relief when he sees them, that he forgets he's supposed to be using what's left of his strength to stand, and he wobbles unsteadily on his feet. Melinda reaches out and puts her arm around his shoulders to steady him.

The other kids look pleased to see him, but give her looks that spell curiosity, distrust and fear. On the shoulder of a meek-looking boy with fluffy brown hair and big golden-brown eyes shifts a small figure clad mostly in black.

"Ah, Melinda May, is that you? You've grown."

She looks straight into black eyes she hasn't seen in a long time, before looking up to see a little green chameleon on his fedora, before finally looking down to see a yellow Pacifier hanging from the infant's neck.

"Long time no see, Reborn."

* * *

The fate of the world rests on _teenagers_. Children still in Japan's definition of middle school, one of which hasn't even hit puberty yet, if the pitch of his voice is anything to go by.

There's that one kid with silver hair, the distinctive rasp of a chain smoker and the most punk attitude she's ever seen (Hayato Gokudera, Storm, also known as Smoking Bomb Hayato-- even S.H.I.E.L.D.'s heard of him because he carries enough dynamites to blow up a school and have more left over), the tall jock with the short black hair who just wont freaking stop smiling (Takeshi Yamamoto, Rain), a young boxer with white hair who absolutely no concept of indoor voice (Ryohei Sasagawa, Sun), a slip of a girl with a skull-decorated eyepatch and serious shyness issues (Chrome Dokuro, Mist), and the odd one out, a boy of _five_ and is as obnoxious as tiny children of his age come (Lambo, Lightning).

Their leader and Sky is that little fluffy bunny of a kid with a high voice who everyone calls 'Tsuna', but Reborn informs Melinda that he's Tsunayoshi Sawada. Also known as Iemitsu Sawada's son. Also known as _Vongola Decimo_. Meaning the children assembled around him are the so-called, much-feared Vongola Guardians, minus Kyouya Hibari the Cloud. But they assure her that he's also a teenager at the moment (which is supposed to be impossible, because he'd definitely been older than twenty when she saw him a few years ago).

They're supported by Poison Scorpion Bianchi, an experienced assassin who Melinda's heard of because everything she cooks comes out poisonous and is also apparently the Smoking Bomb's older half-sister, I-Pin who's just Lambo's age (and Feng's second apprentice according to Reborn and what are the chances that they meet here?), Byakuran's former right-hand man Shouichi Irie (and even if he's been on Vongola's side all along, Melinda still has to squash the murderous urges in her), another former Millefiore mechanic simply called Spanner, Vongola's own mechanic and engineer Giannini, a young man named Fuuta de la Stella with the strange nickname of Ranking Prince, and two civilian girls who _still_ don't know that they're dealing with the Italian mob and aren't even part of this conversation.

Then they tell her that to make things easier, Byakuran challenged them to a war game called Choice, and they have a month to prepare to fight against his most elite people, his own Guardians. One of whom thinks bathing in lava is a completely harmless and relaxing hobby.

Well, they're all doomed.

 _Then_ they tell her that they're from ten years in the past-- Sawada and his Guardians, Reborn, I-Pin and the civilians, and even Basil-- and that they were brought here though a plan by Sawada's present self to defeat Byakuran because they're the only ones who can. Unfortunately the Decimo and Guardians of this year are locked in a machine until their younger selves return to their time period, so they're no help whatsoever.

Her Japanese is halting and she tends to second-guess her grammar from lack of practice, but it's better than the mangled mess she makes of Italian. Still, she checks with Reborn if she heard the kids correctly.

"Time travel, _really?_ " she asks him in English.

Reborn just gives her this smile. This smile that she remembers really well because she just _knows_ he's being a shit on purpose, the smile she wanted to rip his face off before when she was still a wild hellion of a teenager. She almost did back then, and the only reason she didn't succeed was because she got caught by Feng and Luce and got thoroughly scolded for it.

"Look, you old hag," Gokudera says with a GenAm accent, "I don't give a fuck who you think you are or what you're believing in but if you're going to insult the credibility of the Boss--"

"You're going to proceed to stuff dynamites in me until I explode from the sheer number of them," she finishes in a bland tone she's learned from both Lal Mirch and Phil. "I'm just making sure that nothing you told me was lost in translation. You know how it is."

He bristles at her like a cat that reminds her so much of her own youth, and looks like he's really going to pull out a bunch of sticks of dynamite to follow through with it, but Yamamoto slings an arm over his shoulders. That causes him to start yelling at _Yamamoto_ , and everything just turns into chaos. Kids screaming, dynamite and grenades being brandished, punches almost getting thrown, the works.

She's so glad for the S.H.I.E.L.D. lessons on how to get out of a firefight without being caught as she creeps out of the room. But how in the world has she managed to get herself into this mess?

* * *

Shortly after she and Basil arrive, someone else comes. He's like someone's idea of a perfect blond, blue-eyed and handsome young man, and he even comes into the base on his Sky Horse like they're in a romance drama.

Except he's not really anyone's perfect man because for one, they're in an _underground base_ , and for another, he's a complete klutz. He cant even get off his horse without getting his foot caught in the stirrup and crashing to the floor.

His name is Dino and he's the boss of the Chiavarone family, one of the Vongola's closest allies. He's also called the Bucking Horse, but Melinda thinks he gets bucked off more than he does the bucking.

Melinda's not impressed by him at all, but when he hears her name, it seems like _he_ is.

"Melinda May? As in H--"

"Don't. Say it."

"Y-yes ma'am!"

* * *

She visits Lal Mirch in the hospital wing when she's finally well enough not to shuffle everywhere like a zombie. That doesn't mean she wont take a seat on the chair beside the bed though. Her legs still need a break.

Earlier, Reborn told her that because Lal's curse is incomplete, she managed to physically grow up again. Sure enough, Lal Mirch is an adult, and looking just the same as she did when they first met, save for the burn scar on her right cheek the way Feng described it.

"I'd ask where the Fountain of Youth is, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't like the answer," she says as a greeting.

"I'm still older than you, Melinda. Don't you forget it."

"Hard to remember when you look even younger than the Poison Scorpion."

Lal rolls her eyes, and Melinda feels satisfaction at finally being able to keep up with her one-time teacher and her sharp tongue. It only took her almost forty years, but better late than never.

"Feels horrible, doesn't it."

Melinda doesn't even have to ask what Lal is talking about. Not when their Pacifiers are hanging from their necks for all to see, and their faces are shades too pale to be called healthy.

"Felt worse when I came in here," Melinda says, thinking back to her first step into the base. It was like a jolt of electricity running through her veins and taking away what little energy she had left. To her eternal embarrassment, she woke up in a bedroom, meaning someone had picked her up and carried her there.

"That's just the force field. Out there, it's all radiation. The base blocks it out, and the barriers clean it out of you. It just has a kick to it."

"Oh, is that why you're in here and not training the children?"

"You got older and mouthier, I see."

"Because I learned from the best of the best." Melinda jerks her head towards her companion. "And that certain someone made sure to put some important life lessons into an impressionable teenager's head. So don't avoid the question."

Lal huffs at her. "I did my part. It's up to them to continue. Besides, the Bucking Horse is good enough."

Melinda doesn't believe a word of it. "Keep telling yourself that and you might just believe it. You're hurting from more than just the radiation, aren't you."

Lal just… sighs. _Sighs_ , which is something she's never seen Lal do. This must be something truly serious then. "Colonello died. I found his killer and took him out. But I used up too much energy and got myself too many injuries."

Melinda is silent for a moment. She'd heard about Colonello's death-- she knows Yuni, Lal Mirch and Reborn are the only Arcobaleno left alive, and she doesn't count herself because she's never considered herself as one despite evidence to the contrary.

"Did you make it a painful one?"

"As painful as I could make it."

"Good." If asked, she wont deny she feels some satisfaction in hearing that one of her old friends' killers has been put down in the messiest way. And she _knows_ Lal made it messy and and a huge spectacle, because when Lal's angry, everyone might as well run and hide.

Both of them lapse into silence, because they're not the type of person to fill ever waking moment with chatter. It's not their style.

But it's Lal Mirch's style to break silences in the most unexpected and sometimes most awkward ways possible.

"Hurricane May, really?"

"Some people have no imagination."

* * *

Reborn asks her to train Sawada for one day after he manages to open his Box properly. Meaning, he wants her to kick him all around the training room, and cant ask Lal Mirch because she's still on bed rest. And Melinda is his next best pick, because she's experienced and knows how to control her Box Animal well.

And Melinda thinks _why not?_ It beats sitting around and twiddling her thumbs.

"Show me your Box Weapon. For today, you're allowed to only use it, and the only Flames you may use are the ones you'll open the Box with," she tells the boy, and he swallows two little pills before a plume of Sky Flame bursts to life on his forehead.

Mobsters tend to describe Vongola Decimo as a man who always fights with his brow furrowed and swings his fists around like he's praying, and Melinda finds out why.

Sawada can enter Hyper Dying Will, and according to a lesson Feng gave her years ago, it's a state that releases all internal limiters to make the user more calm and confident in battle. Only few people have ever managed to achieve this, and Sawada has managed it at _fourteen_. But more than that, the Mode lets him seem more truthful. Melinda can see in those glowing, now-orange eyes that he's _pained_ at having to fight, even if it's just a spar.

He's a future mob boss, and he doesn't like to fight.

Melinda should be pissed off because he's too soft to be in the mafia, but instead she feels sorry for him because he shouldn't be in it in the first place.

"Why do you fight?" she asks him, in almost the same way Feng asked her all those years ago, when she was new to her Will and didn't know how to use them.

"To protect my friends," Sawada replies, his voice much deeper, much more suited to a man (the _adult_ man he's supposed to be in this era) than a child.

"Then show me how far you're willing to go."

She releases Typhoon from his Box, who dives straight at Sawada. In retaliation, Sawada pulls out his own Box, and a lion cub with a full mane of Sky Flames knocks the falcon out of the air. Typhoon rights himself and flutters onto her shoulder, and the cub lands on Sawada's as the boy's hands-- covered in elaborate leather and steel gloves with the Vongola crest, an old ring on his right middle finger-- burn with his Will.

Sawada's Sky Flames are _beautiful_. Even more brilliant than Luce's and that's saying something because she was the Sky of the Il Prescelti Sette, Arcobaleno and Giglio Nero, and he's a tiny teenaged boy who's as delicate as a pet bird when he's not fighting.

So maybe he _is_ soft as a turtle inside its shell. Maybe he's too kind to take a life. Maybe he just really hates fighting, and is a coward outside of battle. But if his resolution to fight a maniac not to save the world but protect the other kids in this base produces Flames that rivals an Arcobaleno's, then they'll probably be fine. They're _going_ to be fine, as uncharacteristic it is for Melinda to think that.

 _Vongola_ is going to be fine when those kids get back to their own time. And maybe see a revolution too, with Sawada-- _Tsunayoshi_ , he's earned that much from her-- at the helm.

* * *

The little Chinese girl who always hangs around the other girls and sometimes Lambo approaches her one night, when she's in the kitchen and helping herself to some tea, because this is a base full of teenagers and obviously no one's brought in alcohol just in case the kids get into it. Melinda wont deny that she's on edge the moment I-Pin comes in.

Her master chooses some quirky kids as his students. Just look at Melinda. So who knows what this little girl will do?

I-Pin jumps up onto the chair and uses it to bolster herself onto the table and bows to Melinda. And calls her 'elder sister' in Standard Mandarin.

"Jiejie, I'm honored to finally meet you."

Even if she's only five, her vocabulary is clearly advanced, and Melinda doesn't doubt that Feng had something to do with that.

"He's talked about me I see," she says in the same language as she watches I-Pin pull a mug towards herself. Melinda doesn't let her touch the kettle, and pours the tea herself.

"Sifu told me stories."

"Nothing bad, I hope."

I-Pin beams at her in the way only happy young kids who've met their superstars and role models can, and Melinda's not sure how to take this. She's been the role model of baby agents, the standard they hold martial artists and then S.H.I.E.L.D. Flame users, and also the monster under the bed, one of the many boogiemen that S.H.I.E.L.D hides. She's seen how people of varying backgrounds react to her. But she's never been on the receiving end of a child's adoration.

"He told me you're the best example of a Storm."

* * *

The base has never been quiet, not with the kids making a mess every so often while training. But it stops being quiet, _period_ , when someone new arrives.

Someone _loud_.

Melinda first sees him stomping down the hallway, dripping wet and dragging a giant, _whole_ tuna that she's willing to bet was still alive about an hour ago. When he passes her by, she gets a whiff of sea salt, and the sight of two blue-grey eyes from behind that curtain of long silver hair. The only reason why Melinda doesn't bother stopping him is because she's speaking with Lal, and she's not concerned about the newcomer at all.

The man pauses for a moment, eyes flicking down to her Pacifier, and while the sneer on his face never goes away, the suspicion in his eyes fade. And then he stomps off again, towards the meeting room where she knows the kids are, bellowing at the top of his voice.

# " _ **VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIII!!**_ "

"All right, who the hell is that?" she asks Lal when her ears stop ringing.

"Commander Superbi Squalo, second-in-command of the Varia, the Vongola's elite independent assassination squad."

 _What_. "What's he doing here?"

As it turns out, he's here to train Yamamoto in preparation for Choice, because they're both swordsmen and Squalo is apparently called the Sword Emperor. She hears he's dragged the boy all the way out of the base, to places unknown.

Poor kid.

* * *

Melinda is busy boiling some water for some late-night tea when Squalo stomps in, and cant he do something _quietly?_ He's an assassin, for god's sake.

But more than that, she wonders where Yamamoto is, if he's actually in the base (hopefully asleep somewhere because he deserves a night without Squalo and his loud voice), or if Squalo left him to come all the way here for whatever reason.

"Vooooi, Hurricane May," he spits out, and even his regular speaking voice is louder than anyone else's she's ever heard. "The fucking Wrath of the Vermilion Bird and the New Storm Arcobaleno."

"And you're the Sword Emperor. What do you want?"

He smacks a few bottles of whiskey on the dining table, making Melinda raise an eyebrow.

"You've been all around the world running from the Millefiore trash. I wanna hear that."

"You want to _debrief_ me."

Squalo sneers. "We're dealing with the fucking Millefiore here, and a lot of trash don't live too long to talk about them. If you survived this long, then you've got some stories to share."

"And all I get in return is a drink."

"VOOOI, _Grandma, be glad I went and got you alcohol_." Melinda can feel his agitation and a bit of his Will, and she realizes that he's a Rain. How the hell is he a _Rain_ when he's as tranquil as a herd of rampaging wildebeast? "You'd have whined, bitched and complained if I didn't, admit it! You fucking Arcobaleno are always looking for something in return!"

She wouldn't have, actually, but she's not going to tell him that. She's been needing a drink since she got to Namimori, and if the good Commander is giving it to her in exchange for dirt on the Millefiore… well. She's got nothing to hide when it comes to the mafia-related incidents. As crazy as he is, he's an ally too.

"Then grab a seat. But if you call me 'grandma' again, I'm going to have to tell Yamamoto why his teacher has shards of glass up his backside."

"FUCK YOU!!"

(By the end of it, they're both so drunk that Squalo, tripping over his own tongue and letting his thick Italian accent bleed into his words, confesses he's never seen someone drink that much aside from his boss. Melinda takes that as a complement.

She also finds out that Viper, with the new name of Mammon, had been the Varia's top Mist user, and that Belphegor, Prince the Ripper who murdered his entire family at the age of eight, had been the closest to a best friend that her old acquaintance had while with them.)

* * *

They lost. The Vongola participated the game against Byakuran's Guardians and the Vongola lost. And now they're on the run.

Again, for Melinda.

But this time she's with the Vongola. And luckily for them all, they finally have Yuni and the other Arcobaleno Pacifiers, and while Melinda doesn't fully understand how Yuni managed to get here all the way from the Millefiore main base without anyone noticing while carrying such precious cargo, she's just glad that her old friend's granddaughter is all right.

Melinda also gives Yuni her own Pacifier, because it's better off with the Sky Arcobaleno than with her.

But they're on the run from Byakuran himself and his most powerful followers, and Melinda wants to yell at all of these moronic kids because Yamamoto, Giannini, Fuuta and Spanner go back into the base to save Squalo, who's down in there holding off Byakuran's Storm Guardian so they can get away. And her head aches because what kind of stupidity is that?

So what does Melinda do? She goes right down there too like a woman on the warpath, and shoves the boys out of the way, back in the general direction of the exit, and yells at them to get the hell out, that she'll save Squalo.

Squalo calls her a rickety old bitch and tells her to get the fuck out of his way. She calls him the Italian word she heard Skull use years and a lifetime ago, the one Luce told her not to repeat in polite company. Then she kicks him hard in the stomach, sending him stumbling back and away.

"Get out of here and help your boss, you brat," she tells him, and opens up her Boxes for her staff and falcon.

Melinda's an agent, with years of experience on the field and has countless accomplishments under her belt. She didn't earn all her nicknames by doing nothing. She survived the first fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. at the hands of HYDRA and struggled with Director Coulson to bring it back up. She's an expert at hand-to-hand combat and has a Box Animal that complements her style perfectly. But she's middle-aged, and most people leave the field before they even hit fifty. She's _old_ by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent standards.

This Zakuro of the Millefiore is moody but he's strong and has a powerful Storm ring on his finger. He's an unknown factor, completely unpredictable. He also has the advantage of _youth_ , almost thirty decades her junior. He wont tire as easily as her, and probably has more experience than her when it comes to Flames. She started earlier, but spent years suppressing her Will and a few years re-acquainting herself with it cant be enough for someone who's a Guardian. Realistically, Melinda has no chance.

If this is going to be her own last stand, she's going to make it count.

Zakuro starts charging up Storm Flames. She doesn't know if he has a Box and if he's going to use it, but she shouldn't let him open it.

She swings her staff at him, but he proves he's a step above her by shattering it. Not wrenching it out of her grip and breaking it over his knee, not snapping it like a twig or a pencil, but by blocking it with one hand and punching it with the other, his bright, almost blinding Storm Flames overwhelming her own and causing the weapon to shatter like glass.

It's completely unexpected, but Melinda doesn't care. It puts her close to him, and even if he's taking advantage of it too by grabbing hold of her shoulder and readying his Flames right in front of her face, it's much easier for her. She directs Typhoon to fly into his face to distract him as she makes one final move.

She cant kill him, but she can make it easier for one of the kids to do it.

Melinda smirks when she drives one of her last Storm knives into the young man's abdomen before his blast of Storm Flames fill her vision. Her last feeling is that of intense, excruciating pain, but she bites her tongue so that she does not scream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 07/22/2017: To everyone asking for a third part: I'm not adding it in. As I've mentioned to one commenter, I wrote this originally for a friend and when she read this, she demanded for a third chapter as a conclusion and I obliged her, though writing it was like pulling teeth because I didn't want to. I have always intended to end this piece right where it did, because I feel that officially adding in some conclusion would cheapen the difficulties and sacrifices the central character (among others) has made throughout the course of this work. Melinda of the Byakuran arc died for a reason, and as per KHR canon, the kids managed to win and return to their own time after the dust settled. How does this affect Melinda of the younger timeline? With the other people who have participated in this arc, she receives the memories of her older self. What will she do with them? I leave that up to my readers to decide.
> 
> I'd say sorry for the cliffhanger, but I'm really not.


End file.
